(Just 22 weeks to the publication of Lineage!)
This digital file for the “John Bass Family Bible Records” is in the collections of the North Carolina State Archives. It’s not a Bible record, though it is assuredly a family record. In this 8 page file are 7 pages from a printed sermon that was used to record family dates (births, marriages, and deaths). This was a very common practice, and it’s always interesting to me that because of the later practice of using Bibles so regularly for this family history work even the collections are known as “Bible Records.”
The book itself is entirely 17th century records. It depicts both a critical 17th and late 18th century perspective on lineage. The first page of the file is a typescript of a manuscript (I didn’t locate the original) dated May 17, 1797 in Norfolk County, Virginia. “This doth certify that William Bass… is of English and Indian descent and is not a Negore not yt a Mulattoe as by some lately and maliciously stated.” This reflects the realities of law that created differing vulnerabilities for folks of native and Black descent, in particular where Black children even from the minority of free families were vulnerable to indenture that often tipped into slavery.
The manuscript within the book documents the marriages of two men, English settlers, John and Edward Basse, to Indigenous women. The first: “John Basse married ye dafter of ye King of ye Nansemond Nation, by name Elizabeth, in Holy Matrimony ye 14 day of August in ye years of our Blessed Lord 1638.” And the second: “Edward Basse sonne of Natal & Mary Basse…took in marriage one virtuous Indian mayd by the Christian name of Mary Tucker and went to live amongst the Shawnees in Carolina in 1644.”
Because this is just a tidbit, and I’m trying to keep these pieces short to highlight archives and archival materials that I didn’t bring into Lineage, I’m resisting adding a bibliography here! But there is such important work among scholars and knowledge keepers about these histories. These histories are incredibly important to the Nansemond and others now. Stick with me, more coming.